1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to telephone systems and in particular to missed call functions on a telephone. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for handling missed calls that generate voicemails on a telephone.
2. Description of the Related Art
A growing number of conventional telephone devices are designed with intelligent functions, such as voicemail notification and missed call notification. When a received phone call is not answered by the callee, the call is flagged and recorded as a missed call in a missed call log (or the received call log in some phones). Also, typically when a call is not answered, the missed call is forwarded to voicemail, and the caller is then prompted to leave a message for the phone user (callee), who may later access and listen to the voicemail, typically at the user's convenience.
Conventional phones do not associate voicemail with missed calls, even though there is logically a strong conceptual tie in the user's mind that the voicemail(s) should be associated with a particular missed call(s). For example, whenever a single missed call results in a voicemail being left by the caller, the user (callee) receives a missed call notification as well as a voicemail notification (icon). The user is thus able to associate the voicemail with the call that was just left. This scenario assumes that the user is around to observe the missed call and subsequent voicemail notification when they first occur.
However, in many cases, the user is not in vicinity of the phone and/or chooses to ignore activities occurring on the phone for a period of time. During such periods, multiple missed calls may be registered, some of which may have an associated voicemail. When the user finally pays attention to the events that have occurred on his phone during that time period, the user is provided a single notification that one or more missed calls occurred and a single voicemail notification that one or more voicemails were recorded in the phone's voice mailbox. There is no correlation between the missed calls and the voicemails.
For such a correlation to be made by the user, the user has to mentally keep track of each missed call and each voicemail notification received, immediately following that missed call. This method of tracking voicemails to missed calls is error prone for many reasons, including for example: (1) the user is forced to keep mental track of multiple phone numbers that may have left a voicemail among a larger number of callers, some of whom did not leave a voicemail; and (2) in some phones, earlier voicemail and missed call notifications may be presented periodically (for legacy voicemails) regardless of whether the most recent missed call resulted in the caller leaving a new voicemail. The user is thus not sure whether the voicemail notification corresponds to a new message or an existing message, which was generated from a most recent missed call or a previous missed call.
For example, the user may be waiting on information from a particular caller and receives three missed calls, one from the caller and two from telemarketers. Only one (or two) voicemails is/are left for the user, and the user currently has no way of discerning which one of the three calls resulted in the voicemail. The lack of association between the voicemail and the messages forces the user to listen to all voicemail(s), only to find out that the voicemail(s) are from telemarketers. The user is frustrated as he would have preferred to not have to listen to voicemail(s) from telemarketers. With current voicemail and missed call systems, however, the time wasted in listening to the voicemail could not be avoided, without the user potentially missing important information left by the particular caller.